Love in the Time of Mercilessness
Choosing to love is a precarious thing, more for some than for others. There’s such a variety of things to get in the way: our expectations, emotions, other’s perceptions, past hurts. Watching my children become human and learn how to love has become a favorite pastime of mine, maybe moreso a daily lesson. The challenge of this lesson comes when my eldest challenges authority, and in this aims to test the bounds of love: even if I do something wrong, will Mama still love me? Will that love remain? She’s feeling out the nature of mercy. Love itself is authority in our lives, and how we choose to acknowledge the mandate of love comes at us in different ways every day. One of the problems of late? So many who have decided that hatred, cynicism, generalization about entire groups of people, and an overall lack of mercy in favor of repudiation and control wipes the mandate of love right out. It disturbs me to the core. The death of my colleague and friend Lance Wilder at age 47 drew out for...